Show HN: Code to wake me up after I ruined my mobile (only source of internet) - <AUTHOR> Hi HN, a week ago I was watching Netflix in the bathtub and well, water damaged my mobile beyond repair while doing so.
Issue:

    a) my mobile phone is my only alarm clock
    b) my only available source of internet
    c) early very important business appointment

 This is the code I wrote at 1 a.m. in the morning (without Google/Stackoverflow) on my Macbook Pro https://scontent.fvie1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t31.0-8/25073127_10...
Since them I'm wondering, what would be the most elegant solution that you would come up with (without looking anything up on - or downloading anything from - the internet)!
Note: yes, I forgot where the milliseconds in setTimeout goes, so I put them everywhere. <comment><USER2> When I was a student I felt like the time had come for some modern way of being woken up. I had a Philips CD-player and a Commodore 64. On the back of that CD-player was an RCA connector marked 'remote control'. I sent a letter to Philips with a request for information on that protocol and some kind soul sent me some pages of timing definitions and encodings. I made an adapter to go between the C64 user bus and that CD-player, wrote an alarm-clock program which could be told to 'play track X at time Y' and off I went...

</comment><comment><USER3> Your Mac literally has an app for that called Calendar.

<comment><AUTHOR> I tried it, could not bring it to alert me. And well, "Google it" was not an option.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> like the other guys said, 1) use a alarm clock, 2) there's a freaking calendar app builtin.

but if you really need to "code" for whatever reason. The core logic is trivially simple. you need to 1) wait til the moment you want to wake up 2) generate some noise.

so just open mac terminal and type:

sleep 28800; while true; do say "wake up"; done

</comment><comment><USER5> "Look ma, no code!"

Use a traditional alarm clock. For instance, I use one of those cheap Ikea alarms[1]. This means that, even when your phone is working, you don't have to have it near your bed, which lowers your incentive to quickly look at it if you can't sleep right away. That did wonders for my sleep quality.

\---

On topic: If I had to come up with a quick hack because it's 2am and I have no alarm clock: I still have a mechanical time switch (for electrical power) somewhere, and I use an old analog Technics stereo. Combine that with a turntable and you've got yourself a fine alarm clock (although with a somewhat coarse granularity) in less than 5 minutes. That's honestly much easier for me than looking up media APIs I have never used without an internet connection :-)

[1]: [https://m.ikea.com/Us/en/catalog/products/art/50187566/](https://m.ikea.com/Us/en/catalog/products/art/50187566/)

</comment><comment><USER6> The most elegant solution is just to buy an alarm clock or watch. They're cheap to buy (you may even be able to get a second hand one for free depending on where you lived), and would cut your electricity usage compared to running your MBP as an alarm clock.

With your phone, have you tried anything to save it after it was damaged by water? If you want a technical challenge, I'd suggest focusing on that. There's advice on the web on how to repair a phone after dropping it in water.

</comment><comment><USER7> Best solution would be to always carry a plastic bag in the bath.

<comment><USER6> That's not a solution, that's a future improvement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Having a decent IDE would basically solve the "no internet" problem, as it'll have code hints for the standard library of your language(s).

Having common sense would have prevented the event that caused the whole problem.

<comment><USER6> > "Having common sense would have prevented the event that caused the whole > problem."

It has nothing to do with common sense. Accidents happen. Don't try to make out that preventable accidents never happen to you because you have "common sense".

<comment><USER8> I didn't say accidents never happen to me.

I said, having common sense (ie not using a sensitive piece of electronics while literally sitting in a bathtub full of water) would have prevented the original problem.

Accidents absolutely happen all the time. That doesn't mean we shouldn't _try_ to avoid them by applying common sense to our actions.</comment></comment></comment>


To Be a Genius, Think Like a 94-year Old - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/07/opinion/sunday/to-be-a-genius-think-like-a-94-year-old.html?_r=0 <comment><USER2> > A study of Nobel physics laureates found that, since the 1980s, they have > made their discoveries, on average, at age 50.

Many Nobel physics laureates are the team leaders of large teams of experimenters, who only got to the leadership position at the end of their career, and made the discovery after years upon years of effort.</comment>


Massive tunnels hollowing the earth under NY - <AUTHOR> http://gizmodo.com/5985618/incredible-images-of-the-new-massive-tunnels-hollowing-new-york-city

<comment><USER2> Silly question, what's holding the rooves up of those big spaces, is it thick concrete - or is it just very thick rock under NY ?

<comment><AUTHOR> good question actually, isn't really clear to me either. I assume it's just the rock though, for a couple of reasons: looks like it in most pictures, the amount and strength of concrete needed to hold the weight of what's above is beyond imagination, last but not least: from the rock's point of view this tunnel isn't all that massive but rather a small hole through it's body that doesn't weaken it at all.</comment></comment>


The Last Structuralist - <AUTHOR> https://www.claremont.org/crb/basicpage/the-last-structuralist/ <comment><USER2> 'As Haven describes, he organized a symposium on structuralism at Johns Hopkins in 1966. ... the triumph of the event was an address by a young French philosopher, Jacques Derrida, who was just beginning to "deconstruct" the grand schemes of structuralist thought as mere creations of "discourse."'

Seems particularly insightful given what we know now in this age of Machine Learning.

Thanks for posting.</comment>


At Singularity U., big brains meet the future - <AUTHOR> http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10314453-52.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

<comment><USER2> Everything sounds great except the name. If it were called "Pete and Ray's Awesome High-Tech Stuff Event" I'd think it was the greatest thing ever, but the name "Singularity University" makes me want to sigh and/or giggle.

[edit: I really don't want to start a pro/anti-singularity argument, but even if you _do_ think that the "singularity" is near, the stuff mentioned doesn't seem to have much to do with it]

</comment><comment><USER3> A decent overview of the curriculum from FT - "South Park meets Harvard Business School": [http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6886ab5c-8cdd-11de-a540-00144feabd...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6886ab5c-8cdd-11de-a540-00144feabdc0,dwp_uuid=fc1ed142-a0ec-11dd-82fd-000077b07658.html?ftcamp=rss)</comment>


Guy Who Reverse-Engineered TikTok Reveals the Scary Things He Learned - <AUTHOR> https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/fxgi06/not_new_news_but_tbh_if_you_have_tiktiok_just_get/ <comment><USER2> 2 days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23665084](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23665084)

4 days ago: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23638129](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23638129)

</comment><comment><USER3> I don't doubt at all that TikTok is super shady, but

> I'm getting a lot of DM's asking me to prove the majority of this with a > paper and snippets of the offending code. I have a decent amount of my notes > on my other laptop that recently had a motherboard failure and the majority > of that data is on the laptop's SSD. It's a macbook pro, so recovering the > data isn't exactly super simple. I have some frida scripts that I pushed to > my git server as well as some markdown files + conversation logs I've had > with exploit devs, but not much else. In order to get everyone the proof > they require, I'll likely need to reverse the app all over again which isn't > something I have time for right now.

Just sounds like "my dog at my homework".

<comment><USER4> My 2013 MacBook Pro Retina recently died too, but anything worth keeping or working on was stored in free-tier Dropbox, which has multi version history too.

And I'm just a dumb boiler-maker / welder.

It seems absurd to me that anyone with half a technical clue wouldn't use some kind of off-device / off-sit backup.

<comment><USER5> To be honest - I know I should - but I don't either.

Lots of people with technical clue's are also _lazy as fuck_ about doing uninteresting work like setting up proper backups. Also somewhat paranoid about putting backups on other peoples infrastructure like dropbox (especially unencrypted).

<comment><USER6> Overconfidence. We somehow cling to this absurd notion that we're capable enough to perform an emergency recovery if necessary. Never mind that we've already experienced the difficulty of losing data one way or another, the delusion yet persists.

I just wish affordable tape drives never disappeared.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Disclosure: am a dev working in the MCN business.

The "private data" the app collected, is used, for most part, fingerprint the unique user.

In every MCN app, there was a huge fake user problem. If an app collect zero identifiable fingerprint, then a spammer can easily fake millions of views and manipulate ranked content. The app developers are asked think clever to collect every piece of info they can, while spammers spent night and days spoof every parameter in a virtual machine or even on a matrix of remote controlled real phones.

For example, if a iPhone 11 user logs in, but only with screen resolution of 320x240, is it legit? I have caught tens of thousands of fake users with simple checks like this. However the tricks expires pretty quickly, you have to move on with new feature checks, together with decision trees and bayesian networks.

Some of the fingerprint collecting SDKs are even using native code to check some ARM specific instructions to tell if the device is fake or not. The parameters check had to be done in every important API calls, or spammers can easily pretend be good citizen during parameter checking process and swap the session to a cheaper VM/phone or spam the targeted API with scripts.

Chinese companies all have their own team dealing with frauds or spamming on daily basis, the same way as everything can be faked in China.

Think cyber attacks from Chinese IPs are bad? Now imagine doing business in China and all users of your product are bots, what methods do you have to filter out the real human users? Good luck.

Many ads network SDKs are collecting user data in the same way. Otherwise it's easy to spoof fake clicks and page views.

I not stating if it's the right or wrong thing to do, I am just saying it's how things are done in current state of business.

<comment><USER8> What's MCN?

<comment><USER9> HN seems guilty of frequently using obscure acronyms. Is this an SV culture thing? Is it that hard to type things out or use a text-expanding app?

<comment><USER10> What's SV? (seriously)

<comment><USER11> Silicon Valley.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> There has been a lot of bash on TikTok recently. TikTok is by no means good, but I'm yet to see it proofed much worse than counterparts from Western companies.

A lot of videos and articles make me feels more like pure anti-China sentiments, just like many similar campaigns did to Huawei last year.

It's fine call out the risk in terms of personal privacy, or national security.

It's also fine to have and express anti-China sentiments, since everyone has his/her own opinions.

But it annoys me there are a lot of people charging with only assumptions, or play double standards just to make every Chinese business or Chinese person looks evil. It's just hypocritical.

<comment><USER13> _I 'm yet to see it proofed much worse than counterparts from Western companies_

Telling people that TikTok is doing some shady stuff doesn't mean other companies are better. It's not a competition to see which company is good and which is bad. _Every_ company that employs user tracking should be highlighted and asked to stop, and users should be informed about what the company is doing, no matter where the company is based.

If it could be proven that _every_ social media app is covertly tracking users that would not mean TikTok is good. It would mean every social media app is bad.

<comment><USER14> But here, no proof was provided at all. It's just accusations. Whenever there's an article about privacy issues with Facebook, WhatsApp, Google etc. there's in most cases a real name attached to the findings, and in _all cases_ detailed information on what is leaked, how it is leaked, snippets of reverse engineered code, etc.

In this case we have a random reddit shitposter calling himself an expert, making wild accusations.

It's not about "which company is better", it's about holding them up to the same standards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Show me the reversed code... and show your work in reversing FB, WP, IG. This is how security works you need to show actual reversing.

</comment><comment><USER16> Here's what I don't get about this.. I've seen all these various claims, and to be frank I did uninstall tiktok just recently as I only enjoyed it for about a week or so then lost interest, and there's all this stuff coming up about it....

All these claims I see sound like EVERY SINGLE APP could be doing the same thing. Are both iOS/Android really _that_ exposed that they can just get all of this info without explicitly asking for permission? If they are bypassing shit and recording your mic under the radar.. how the hell would apple/google be letting a billion user+ app be doing this?

Something just doesn't pass the smell test here.

<comment><USER17> Every single app could be doing the same thing. They ask for pretty broad permissions for purportedly innocent reasons but once given that access they can use it for anything they choose. This happens because even tech educated people (as you'd expect on HN) insist that they _want_ to sacrifice privacy if it brings functionality [0]. A regular user is probably completely unaware that this could even be a problem. From their perspective they're just getting cool features for free.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23678303](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23678303)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> So, TikTok on my (Android) phone has a grand total of zero permissions. And even if it is able to download and run some code, isn't it running in a sandbox? I don't really understand the panic here...

<comment><USER19> While the app might not be able to harm your phone, your grandma or daughter might not be as tech savvy and grant permissions more freely. Also, even though sandboxed, if you can download and run u known code on the devices of billions of users, you have a very large phone-botnet at your disposal of you ever need it

<comment><USER20> Even if it wasn't your intention, it sounds like you're implying tech savvyness is exclusive to men...please try to be inclusive, this industry needs it so much.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> surprised people are so willing to accept these claims without proof, especially here, where I imagine the number of people who could actually do the work this person claimed to is disproportionately high

<comment><USER22> The technical claims don't seem very far fetched. They're basically describing every banking "anti-fraud SDK" I've ever reversed.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> So is the primary concern about the lengths TikTok goes to scrape user data? Or more-so that it's a Chinese company scraping user data?

I'd assume apps like fb/twitter/snapchat/etc scrape just as much. And since the US gov basically forces them to install backdoors, isn't that worse than this whole TikTok privacy conversation? Maybe I'm missing something though.

<comment><USER24> > I'd assume apps like fb/twitter/snapchat/etc scrape just as much.

The author claims otherwise:

"For what it's worth I've reversed the Instagram, Facebook, Reddit, and Twitter apps. They don't collect anywhere near the same amount of data that TikTok does, and they sure as hell aren't outright trying to hide exactly whats being sent like TikTok is. It's like comparing a cup of water to the ocean - they just don't compare."

<comment><USER25> I said this before on the previous thread. Without knowing the author's background, you can't trust his claim. Either he provides reproducible evidence or has something backing up his claims.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Here's a mirror of the video (from the OP of that thread):

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_fyz5rOwFc](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_fyz5rOwFc)

</comment><comment><USER27> Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

<comment><USER28> How are those claims are extraordinary? It's stuff that all apps are doing to some degree.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> «Sorry, this post has been removed by the moderators of r/videos.»

Also, the video is unavailable on youtube.

<comment><USER30> OP may have intended for you to read the top comment of the post

[https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/fxgi06/not_new_news...](https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/fxgi06/not_new_news_but_tbh_if_you_have_tiktiok_just_get/fmuko1m/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Annnd all the links have been removed...

<comment><USER32> Mirror to video shared in post: [https://youtu.be/I_fyz5rOwFc](https://youtu.be/I_fyz5rOwFc)

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> What makes this so much more objectionable than the myriad ad tracking networks on most web pages?

</comment><comment><USER34> >> I have a decent amount of my notes on my other laptop that recently had a motherboard failure and the majority of that data is on the laptop's SSD. It's a macbook pro, so recovering the data isn't exactly super simple.

Isn't it an excellent sample of "the cat ate my code" excuse?

</comment><comment><USER35> Imagine when it's done with Discord.

</comment><comment><USER36> >thinly-veiled as a social network

I think i read that exact sentence here on HN, oh and my Dog eat all the proofs. No need to do it again ;)

</comment><comment><USER37> The link has been removed from both reddit and Youtube, is there any other link available to read the actual post.

</comment><comment><USER38> From a legal perspective, it seems that Tiktok is mostly (but not completely) covered. They mention these activities in their privacy statement. The statement is not clear enough on what each individual activity is used for: they put a lot of activities under an umbrella reason such as "providing tech support" and "collection for analytics partners".

It doesn't make their activities right, of course. But it's debatable whether _legally_ speaking, they are in violation of privacy laws.

I think they have a higher chance of violating EU privacy laws than US ones. GDPR is quite strict: you need to have a good reason for doing something, not merely mentioning that you'll do something.

I think it's also interesting to know that Tiktok's servers are in Singapore.

</comment><comment><USER39> Not surprised at all, Tik Tok has clear ties to china and with all things china comes the governments control. chances are china was using Tik Tok as a global surveillance tool.

<comment><USER40> And everything from the U.S. comes with prism and national security letters.

<comment><USER39> Valid point, but I prefer a democratic govt spying on me then a totalitarian govt with world conquer ambitions, and a history of suppressing minorities

<comment><USER41> As someone who was born and lives in neither of these countries, both have conquer ambitions and a history of suppressing minorities.

The USA is just much better at pretending everything it does is rightful.

<comment><USER42> Americans do the American Exceptionalism Poe's Law thing nonstop and I alternate between exhaustion and a sense of humor about it.

I mean, "a history of suppressing minorities" in the summer of 2020 is very funny. It does feel like Gen Z kids are aware of global events enough to not fall for this, so maybe it is ending.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> Uhm, video disappeared or silently geo-blocked.

</comment><comment><USER44> It's there a tiktok proxy app.

</comment><comment><USER45> This guy's comment (prosound2000) pretty much tells it like it is:

> The problem here is Facebook, Instagram and Twitter are US based companies > that are beholden to the government. While sure you have lobbying going on, > they are ultimately separate from the government, and if are found in > violation of certain laws will be prosecuted or at least brought in front of > congress and can face stiff penalties in the US. TikTok IS the Chinese > government. They are beholden to no one. They can't break the law since they > are the law.

Well, he almost has it figured out. We are all actually beholden to our governments. Even Apple allegedly held off on iCloud encryption because of FBI pressure, not to mention constant right-wing efforts to destroy encryption and force companies to insert backdoors. China has a stronger central authority (therefore easier to force companies to do things), but the US is itching to go that route as well. Fighting it means preserving an actual ideological backbone, rather than simply consolidate all power to destroy our enemies.

If we lose our sights on encryption, separation of our corporate entities from our government, then we are just China but in a different location.</comment>


Kickstarter's Economic Impact Measured at $5B - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/28/from-virtual-communities-to-real-life-enterprises-how-kickstarter-generated-more-than-5bn <comment><USER2> An interesting follow-up study would be to see the amount of money Kickstarter has saved by not wasting money on products that no one wants.

<comment><USER3> Maybe the downvotes misunderstood the question? I think he means, people who ran a campaign, discovered no demand, and saved the costs of building a company / product that would have failed.

That's a real value that Kickstarter provides.

<comment><USER4> Or a real deterrent to people doing creative work for its own sake. I no longer hear of people just building something new because they want to build things. Everyone needs funding, or else they just... don't.

Kickstarter as a validation tool for a business is one thing. But one of its original intents was to fund creative works. I think that intent has slipped away, sadly.

<comment><USER5> Another front page article now is a teenager that built a software-defined radio from scratch. For fun. With an FPGA, a home-designed 6-layer board, BGA parts, hand placed, and reflowed in an oven he made in only 3 spins. Ridiculous respect.

Now that he's built it and people are asking to buy it, he's not even sure if wants to (bother to) sell any.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12181350](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12181350)

I think there's probably about as much creative/hobby work getting done as before. Now, you're just hearing about the wantrepreneurs who can't get a Kickstarter funded. Those people probably weren't going to build something in the absence of Kickstarter/Indiegogo either.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I was speaking with one of the founders of one of the first successful (multi- million dollar) kickstart campaigns and Kickstarter is missing its "maker" edge. It used to be a place where people could go to test ideas and now it's mostly just a marketing platform for fleshed out ideas and products.

We took a step back and started building Baqqer[0] to help makers find community and resources while they from from idea to prototype to product. You should check it out, we have a lot of cool stuff like splash pages for projects, newsletters, etc. We also dog food our own product. Any feedback would be cool. :)

[0] [https://baqqer.com/](https://baqqer.com/)

<comment><USER7> Depends on what kind of making you do. It's a boon to people who make independent comics like myself; I've got my third one going right now. [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/egypturnash/decrypting-...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/egypturnash/decrypting- rita-volume-3-and-omnibus)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hmmm, what about all the failed Kickstarters?

Here's another one worth a half a million bucks, with a rock-star co-founder (Yugo Nakamura), and two years later almost zero delivery. Just more empty promises and lack of delivery (except they have been selling at MOMA since last September):

[https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1353046055/framed-a- rev...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1353046055/framed-a- revolutionary-platform-for-digital-art?ref=discovery)

</comment><comment><USER9> Very, very cool. I hear some voices out there saying that crowdfunding is a played out space, and even speaking down about it as a method of getting started. But with numbers like these its impossible to argue against it, a real democratization of entrepreneurship. I'm working on getting my own platform built now, the twist being its competitive. Our first campaign is ongoing. The teams are trump supporters and Hillary supporters, the side that raises the most through pledges gets planes to flyover Denver carrying a message in favor of their candidate. On BART right now headed to SFO and the. Denver to get some canvassing in!</comment>


Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio: for now on, it's a free download - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/21/microsoft-robotics-developer-studio-for-now-on-its-a-free-dow/

<comment><USER2> To get more users: it should work on Linux; interfaces with Python, etc.</comment>


Private Security Needed for VIP Only Burning Man Camp - <AUTHOR> http://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/evg/5160643961.html

<comment><USER2> Please tell me this is satire

edit: Links to a FB group with hilarious comments

</comment><comment><USER3> this is what is wrong with people</comment>


Where Unwanted Christmas Gifts Get a Second Life - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/where-your-unwanted-christmas-gifts-get-a-second-life-1451212201 <comment><USER2> Anyone have a link to the article without the paywall?</comment>


Seven years in hell - <AUTHOR> http://www.avoiceformen.com/mens-rights/domestic-violence-industry/seven-years-in-hell/

<comment><USER2> what can you even say to this? a system so corrupt and biased towards women accusers that a callous ex-wife can ruin her ex-husband's life with very little chance of punishment, with the full help and support of the police, the law and advocacy groups?

This is what feminism does - while there are plenty of feminists who want equal rights, there seems to be an ever-present element of women who will eternally play the victim card to stack the deck in their favour, with an undercurrent of anti-male sexism that somehow seems to be considered acceptable.

I will always support the movement towards equal rights but things like this make me sick and only serve to harm the overall image of equal rights. I hope something is done about these laws and policies.

<comment><AUTHOR> I will post here my what I wrote in the forum (cannot exactly disclose it, but lots of the people there are damaged men, and thus usually blame everything on women) where I saw this post originally:

The problem is not only VAWA...

United States is severely broken currently, PRISM, VAWA, excessive pedohunting, Manning prosecution, stopping a president plane, throwing false rape accusations against a journalist, making a kid suicide over legal hell (Aaron Swartz for those that don't know, the same prosecutors are also involved into other horrible cases of overprosecution), imprisoning a 19 year old boy over a sarcastic comment over a online game (someone called a boy playing League of Legends "crazy", he replied: "Yes sure, I am so crazy I will go to a kindergarten shoot the toddlers and eat their still beating hearts, lol jk"), asking a half million bail on that boy (yes O.o, some people were confused, because it beats bails of rape, murder and other extremely violent crime cases)...

And the most sad of it all, is that most of US people don't move their asses, instead they just show their hole to the president (whoever it is at the time) and wait to get fucked.</comment></comment>


Not a Luddite fallacy (2011) - <AUTHOR> http://baatz.io/posts/not-a-luddite-fallacy/ <comment><USER2> Required reading anytime someone invokes the word "Luddite": [http://www.amazon.com/Rebels-Against-The-Future- Industrial/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Rebels-Against-The-Future- Industrial/dp/0201407183)

Enclosure ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enclosure)) is suspiciously never mentioned whenever the Luddites are invoked. It's not as simple as "technology took muh job, rar!" \-- it's more like "hey, this common land that used to belong to all of us has been forcibly taken away and given to this guy with a factory who now gets to be super productive and take away our livelihoods, but he doesn't have to share any of the increased wealth he now enjoys."

Technology undoubtedly increases productivity and wealth. The question is, WHO gets to own that wealth and what gives them a right to it.

<comment><USER3> Good point - here in Scotland there were the Clearances in the 18th and 19th centuries forcing peoples off lands - either to the cities or to emigrate or to simply starve:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Clearances](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highland_Clearances)

There is a lot of very murky history to land ownership in Scotland - one of the reasons I'm so pleased with the "right to roam" that we have now as well as Scottish Government policies favouring community land ownership.

<comment><USER4> If you haven't already read it I highly recommend "The Poor Had No Lawyers" by Andy Wightman [1]. It can be a struggle to convince people to read a book on the history of Scots property law but it is a really fantastic book. Manages to balance detail without ending up stultified and provides a lot of context behind the current state of land reform in Scotland.

[1] [http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Poor-Had-No- Lawyers/dp/178027114...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Poor-Had-No- Lawyers/dp/178027114X/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The generalized version of the fallacy ("Labour-saving technologies increase unemployment _in general_ by reducing demand for labour _in general_.") may be wrong or not. That's kind of hard to figure out.

However, the micro level version of the fallacy is, I think, not a fallacy at all, but very much true and can be disastrous for a great many individuals: "Labour-saving technologies increase unemployment _among people with my qualifications_ by reducing demand for labour _for people with my qualifications_." (The consequence may not be unemployment. The affected people more or less only qualify for jobs where no qualifications are necessary, probably leading to unemployment for some, a reduction in income for others.)

Put another way, while the labour market in general may be left intact, the effect on specific individuals may be disastrous. In that context luddites smashing up machines may be entirely rational for them personally, because even though the industrial revolution lifted large swathes of humanity out of poverty (eventually), along the way many individuals had to suffer greatly and it didn't get better for them personally until they died. Maybe it got better for their kids or grandkids.

That's one reason why thinking about macro level effects is not enough (but there may also be better solutions than smashing up machines, i.e. it may well be possible to get the positive macro level effects over longer time scales while also, through other means, reducing or eliminating poverty or suffering on a micro level).

<comment><AUTHOR> You're right, the micro-level version isn't a fallacy (either..), though I think that's less contentious, or? Many countries already have some experience with this. For example, agriculture has gone from having 70-80% of the workers in 1870 to less than 2% in 2008 ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_the_United_Stat...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_the_United_States#Employment)). Some countries now have welfare systems that introduce some security on an individual level, though in their current form they tend to rely on the _average_ employment rate remaining fairly high.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's not clear why the author thinks it's not a fallacy.

What bothers me about this sort of discussion, though, is the assumption that we need to work. I want technology to do my job for me, so I can focus on fun stuff. But for that to work, we should change our economic system so we don't need to work, or at least not as much.

What technology has really done, is not so much take away people's jobs, but make capital investment an increasingly large part of productivity, leading all the profits of this increased productivity to end up with the small elite that controls the capital. Look at how much wealth inequality has grown over the past 100 years, particularly in the US.

Keynes predicted in the 1930s that due to increased productivity, we'd all have to work a lot less than we're currently doing. He's wrong because the benefits of our increased productivity are not distributed equally.

In short: we need a basic income. Or something else to ensure that everybody benefits from this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry I couldn't make it more clear. Was there anything particular that you didn't understand?

Agree on the basic income (in general, I'm not sure about the details). Jobs so far have been a convenient and pragmatic (not necessarily fair) way to both create and distribute wealth. At the same time, we should note that popular alternatives like communism or socialism have failed rather badly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> " _I hope I have been able to convince you that the Luddite fallacy is not a fallacy and that this will have significant economic and social implications._ "

I'm sorry, did you actually make an argument? All I could find was some un- supported assertions.

<comment><AUTHOR> No, not for it having significant economic and social implications, that's more a corollary of employment rate decreasing -- I'll change that sentence. The argument for the Luddite fallacy not being a fallacy was that humans have so far been able to compete with technology, but that we're fast losing that edge and when that happens things really are different this time. Does that make sense?

<comment><USER8> That's an assertion, not an argument. The article also does not support it in any way (what would turn it into an argument). Thus, I'll have to agree with the GP, in that it is an unsupported assertion.

It's an assertion that I happen to agree with, but not because of this article.

<comment><AUTHOR> Perhaps, I might be missing something. The way I understand it is that "the Luddite fallacy is not a fallacy" is an assertion (OED: "a confident and forceful statement of fact or belief"). The reason, I claim, is that humans will not be able to compete with robots for much longer (in large numbers) which means unemployment is likely to go up (I understand that that's not a strict implication since governments could ban robots). The reason humans won't be able to compete with robots is that technology is gaining more and more of the abilities that humans use in their jobs (like reasoning and visual recognition). Those reasons consists of (a set of) assertions that could be wrong, but they are reasons and an argument is (OED again) "a reason or set of reasons given in support of an idea, action or theory". Thus, I thought that what I did qualified as an argument, or am I mistaken?

In any case, if you agree with the assertion, what would be your argument for it?

<comment><USER7> " _...that humans will not be able to compete with robots for much longer..._ "

Do you have any convincing reasons to believe that?

<comment><AUTHOR> You might not find them convincing, but the reasons I believe that is the case are:

\- Human hardware is fairly fixed (unless we go the cyborg route) whereas robot hardware (at least the computation part) evolves roughy exponentially and I don't see reasons for that to stop.

\- As robot behaviour evolves (whether through deliberate design, genetic algorithms, or other types of learning) improvements can be replicated quickly and approximately for free. Improvements to human behaviours is notoriously hard, expensive, and time-consuming to replicate.

\- We can rewrite many of our wealth creation recipes to make use of more specialised robots instead of flexible humans, which means robots won't need to get close to general AI before this has significant effects on jobs.

\- We are starting to see robots perform the most sophisticated human skills: visual recognition, acting on and producing language, and decision making under uncertainty. Granted, robots don't do most of these things very well yet compared with humans, but I don't see fundamental reasons for why the development will stop short of human abilities.

\- Robots can work 24/7, won't go on vacation, won't quit on you, don't play political games with the other robots, won't sue you, don't require food and bathrooms, and they'll make fewer mistakes.

\- If you're mostly questioning the timing, I don't have a particularly good answer, but given how I understand the state of things I believe we're talking low single-digit decades rather than centuries for a significant proportion of people to look around and not find a job they could do better than a robot for a liveable wage (without government subsidies). If you disagree on the timescale I think we'd need to have a detailed discussion about how we understand technological developments and the jobs people do. You may well be able to convince me that I'm off on the timing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Let's suppose for a moment that we accept the thesis that due to automation, there won't be much work for humans in the future.

Instead of taking wealth from the smaller number of humans who are creating that wealth and giving it to those who are not, why don't we just accept that we don't need so many of us any more? Let the extras die off naturally (note to angry skimmers: I SAID NATURALLY) and migrate to a new lower-population equilibrium. There have been a lot of explanations offered for why the world's more advanced economies have been seeing lower birth rates for decades, but one rarely reads the most obvious one: people are having fewer children because fewer humans are needed. This isn't a problem to be solved, it's a boon to future generations.

While some resources are created through economic activity driven by humans, others (most notably land, in the form of space between neighbors who desire it, frontiers, the economic viability of wilderness conservation, and of course land for economic purposes) are fixed. If fewer humans can create just as much of the variable stuff while leaving more of the fixed stuff for each one, how is that not better for all? The vast majority of humans, if not literally every last one, will be much wealthier. And that's even before we consider the fundamental unfairness of redistribution, or the waste associated with the political and bureaucratic machines it entails.

Instead of thinking about how to redistribute the dividends from automation, we should be making sure we won't have to. In a given environment, every species has an optimal population. If we alter our environment such that fewer humans can produce the same amount of wealth as more humans, that optimal population has decreased. We need to accept that and adjust to it, not fight it with gimmickry and theft. If (and it's a big if) automation is really going to put billions of people out of productive work, then the only sustainable answer to that is fewer people. Embrace it.

<comment><USER10> You're making an assumption that the purpose of humanity is to work to create wealth. That's a very narrow view of our potential. Many would view human flourishing more through the lens of creativity, relationships, and _meaningful_ work (which may not be economically productive).

While I do believe that smaller populations may be more desirable, the logical conclusion of your line of thinking would be that once we automate everything, then humans should naturally bow out to their technological creations.

<comment><USER9> That assumes it's possible to automate everything that creates wealth (I'm using "wealth" in the author's extremely broad sense; it does not mean "money"). It sounds like you're saying it isn't, and I agree. That is, the optimal human population will never be zero.

<comment><USER11> "Optimal human population of zero" seems like a contradiction-in-terms. For whom is it optimal to have a human population of zero? Surely not for the humans, and since we're the ones who exist, we draw up the criteria.

<comment><USER9> > "Optimal human population of zero" seems like a contradiction-in-terms.

Well, I also noted that it wouldn't occur, so... ok?

> For whom is it optimal to have a human population of zero?

While this is moot given the above, the sad reality is "probably most species other than humans". But that really wasn't the point here at all. Even if an ecosystem is a zero-sum game and the success (or anything less than total extinction) of humans means the failure of something else, that's not a reason to voluntarily go extinct. Nor did I say otherwise. The point isn't there should be zero humans but rather that there's probably a need for far fewer than 8 billion, and that not only would every individual human be better off if there were fewer, humanity as a whole would likely be better off, too. The fact that most other species would have a much better chance of survival in a world with a few million humans than with tens of billions is a great bonus, and one that also adds value to those humans' lives, but was not really the main point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> On the same tone: "Humans need not apply"

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU)

</comment><comment><USER13> What I always wonder about with this formula is how many human jobs from the US have been shipped overseas to other humans who cost less? Those jobs are still being done by people, we just aren't cost competitive in labor for the mass of unskilled job opportunities.

It seems like something like the Fair Tax, where legal citizens get a stipend every month to offset the sales tax against basic needs, that came with a slightly higher stipend to make it more like a basic income, would have the net effect of make low cost labor more affordable and those jobs more viable. It would basically have the effect of doubling minimum wage WITHOUT passing the costs along to the businesses and making labor more expensive.

Just makes you wonder if we wouldn't be better off finding ways to repatriate the jobs that exist than to worry about the ones that are continually more automated.

<comment><USER14> Except that increased money supply means inflation which means that middle & upper class can buy less than before. E.g. someone with a medium salary might only get 20% higher income post-stipend but prices would rise more.

<comment><USER13> Fair Tax eliminates the income tax though, which would take care of that completely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I think the whole question shows that people are thinking wrong.

Think of a society/civilization _spending_ people. Oh, we can automate much of agriculture? Great; we don't have to spend 90% of our people on growing food. Now we can spend them on factory jobs, and our society becomes better off. Now we don't have to spend so many people in factories? That's a good thing, too - we can spend those people on more productive things. Again, our society will become better off.

There are a couple of ways this could not work out, though. First, there is the social unrest that can happen in the time of transition. Second, we can lose one kind of jobs before we figure out what the new kind is, and so leave a lot of people idle. Third, we could eventually create jobs that are beyond our ability to train the bulk of people to be able to do them.

<comment><USER11> But human idleness is the goal! Working, for most people, is a bunch of miserable drudgery.

<comment><USER16> Profit maximization is the goal behind automation.

We'd need to see changes in human nature or society to ensure that misplaced labor can still have a quality of life if idle, because profit optimization says you won't see a cent if I don't have to give it to you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> If automation is providing all your needs, you won't need a job.

[Edit] Spotted this after reading the article:

"Technology has created more jobs than it has destroyed, says 140 years of data"

([http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/aug/17/technology-c...](http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/aug/17/technology- created-more-jobs-than-destroyed-140-years-data-census)

<comment><USER18> >"Technology has created more jobs than it has destroyed, says 140 years of data"

"Past results are not indicative of future performance"

We can't compare the last 200 years of human to the past 20,000.

For example 66 million years ago the dinosaurs had already lived around 140 million years. In another million they would be dead because of exceptional conditions. Everyday in which we live in modern society is an exception condition based upon both the rate of change in human knowledge and rate of change in the environment.

As to your first statement. If I own the machines why should I keep you, that are now unnecessary, alive and instead live in super luxury with a few million people on the planet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Oh no, the singularity is coming!

</comment><comment><USER20> It's not here _yet_ , but automation able to fully replace human beings for a huge number of jobs will eventually come. At that point a universal basic income will be the only option other than walling off the majority of humanity in ghettoes. Totalitarian "poverty state" or post-scarcity socialism, take your pick.

I say this as a somewhat-former libertarian, and partly out of libertarian sentiment. The totalitarian state that would have to be put in place to enforce widespread poverty in a post-employment era would be significantly less libertarian than the alternative. I imagine something that looks like a cyberpunk noir horror film with drones and scanners and gates everywhere. Since humans do possess empathy, the (few) rich would have to be surveilled and policed as much as the poor; your wealth would be absolutely conditional upon your support of the system. Ultimately the situation is unsustainable and would collapse and probably lead to something even more totalitarian.

<comment><USER21> It seems that you do not account for falling prices due to automation. And the cost of automated machines will fall too.

<comment><USER20> That will happen for automation and manufactured goods, but not for assets and anything else leveraged. If anything the in-deflation we are seeing today will be amplified as central banks will be forced to keep money cheap to avoid total deflationary collapse. Picture a $5 million starter home that costs <$1000 to completely furnish.

This is what a post-scarcity society in denial looks like.

The reason cities like SF and NYC and London already look like this is because they are the vanguard of the future. If present trends continue a house in rural Kentucky will be as unaffordable relative to average wages as one in SOMA. All that cheap money has to go somewhere, so if labor is deflating it must go into assets.

In-deflation is "deflation of labor and the products of labor, and inflation in assets, consumable resources, and essential services like health care and education." It's been the condition in the USA and to some extent Europe since 2008. It's today's equivalent of stagflation in the 70s, something else economists did not think (at the time) was possible and did not understand. Some are starting to get it, which is why you see some starting to talk about inflation in areas like housing separate from inflation in the rest of the economy. In-deflation is not visible in traditional aggregate inflation indices because deflating manufactured goods and labor are grouped with inflating assets and essential goods/services and the two cancel.

<comment><USER22> Can you recommend any further reading for in-deflation?

<comment><USER20> It's largely a concept I've encountered online, with varying degrees of precision in discussions. There will be books about it in 20 years once the academics notice, sort of like stagflation (which was "impossible"). It really strikes me as an exact description of today's economic reality -- stagnant wages, deflation in manufactured goods and anything tech, and crazy inflation in areas like housing, rent, health care, and tuition.

So far this has been driven mostly by outsourcing, not automation. When automation really kicks in with good AI, it's game over. There will be universal basic income or blood in the streets.

<comment><USER22> it's such a new idea google can't even find it

<comment><USER20> [https://www.google.com/#q=%22indeflation%22](https://www.google.com/#q=%22indeflation%22)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should I use Docker? - <AUTHOR> I am building an internal server for my company in Flask. As of now I have successfully deployed it to a Digital Ocean droplet, configured nginx and WSGI and got it running. Another developer is building a React app to interact with my server's API which I think I will deploy on the same droplet too. Because it's just an internal app, I only use one droplet. I don't know whether I should use Docker to containerize both the server and client apps or just put them on the same machine as two monolithic applications. I heard the good practice these days is to use Docker and microservices but I don't want to overengineer things. <comment><USER2> There will be a bit of "yak shaving" up front to get it working in the container but I think it's probably worth it over the long run. The main benefit is that you can be sure that the environment you develop in locally will be the same as what is deployed in the wild. As you share your code/application with other developers (which it sounds like you're starting to do) this will become more and more important. Just make sure you're writing your application to be "cloud native" up front (e.g. put your configuration parameters in environment variables)

</comment><comment><USER3> Have you got any problems with your current setup?

<comment><AUTHOR> Currently no, but I want to structure it in a maintainable way.

<comment><USER3> I understand. Still, if it ain't broke...

Check out Max Kanat-Alexander's piece on over-engineering (10 minute Google video) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wxyOng0-14](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0wxyOng0-14)

In other words, if you're not having maintainability issues with it now, leave it be... once you start having issues, you can re-design (when you actually need it). =)</comment></comment></comment>


Largest Known Prime Number Found - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/36979/description/Largest_known_prime_number_found <comment><USER2> A headline that's always true.

<comment><USER3> what if an eccentric math genius finds one larger but doesn't publish?

<comment><USER4> To keep it pedantic: published != known. Known by one is still known.</comment></comment></comment>


A thought I had about money - <AUTHOR> http://twitter.com/davidnoob/status/24907157511 <comment><USER2> I thought I'd add some content to this treacly post: [http://articles.cnn.com/2002-05-29/tech/time.money_1_pence-f...](http://articles.cnn.com/2002-05-29/tech/time.money_1_pence- formula-average-cost?_s=PM:TECH)</comment>


The Advice I Gave My Students - <AUTHOR> https://www.calnewport.com/blog/2019/12/06/the-advice-i-gave-my-students/ <comment><USER2> I do this sometimes when developing software.

I write a comment in the code or on a notepad to let myself know where to continue.

It makes getting started easier the next time. Starting with a focus is a a much better feeling than where do I start now.</comment>


Ask HN:The best free web based mockup/wireframe tool? - <AUTHOR>

I'm looking for a web-based prototyping/mockup/wireframe tool that
1)Let me design mockups/designs online
2)Allows collaboration with others
3)Let me share it with others to get feedback
4)is free <comment> jarek-foksa I was recently told about Balsamiq. Looks quite nice, though the full version requires Adobe Air and is not free. You can try online demo here: <http://builds.balsamiq.com/b/mockups-web-demo/>

Also check Mockingbird: <https://gomockingbird.com/mockingbird/>

<comment><USER2> I was actually in a meeting today where someone was showing us mockups using Balsamiq. First time I've ever seen it - looked pretty cool. He was able to make interactive PDFs so when you click on an element of the mockup (say a button) it showed the action (like popping up a dialog). He seemed to like it well enough too, but like you said it's not free and requires Adobe Air...

<comment><USER3> I've been using Balsamiq for a while now and I love it. Sure it runs on Air and isn't free, but it's one of the best purchases we've made as a bootstrapped startup. Also, the group that runs Balsamiq is awesome and the CEO -Peldi?- writes a great blog.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Believe it or not, I was in your shoes about a few weeks ago. I decided against the online/web services because I felt it was a bit limiting and I rather have my stuff on my own computer. Here's something I found that fit all my needs and yours: <http://pencil.evolus.vn/en-US/Home.aspx>

You can generate stuff into other formats AND html with jquery tab. Some pretty nice options. And everything is free and open source.

</comment><comment><USER5> Its hard to find a good free one. I've look around and I've been a long time user of Balsamiq. But it like the possibility to easily make an interactive/useable mockup.

I've switched to Protoshare ( <http://www.protoshare.com> ) and you can easily create full fledge prototype that can be actually used/tested.

Check the video on their landing page. Pricing wise it's 29$ / Month

Cheers

</comment><comment><USER6> Wireframe Sketcher has become my favorite tool of late.

Clickable PDFs, simple text markup for control data, story boarding and eclipse integration. No real time collaboration but that hasn't been an issue for me.

The free version nags you a bit but the price was so low I just paid for it.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've been using <http://www.lumzy.com/> for some time now. Its free and does the job quite nicely.I havent used its collab features but its evident that it has some nice ones.

</comment><comment><USER8> I have used Mockflow for a year, but seems the frequency of my design need wasnt so high that I continue to use it.

I'd love to hear which tool falls all the criteria !

</comment><comment><USER9> MockFlowv ( <http://www.mockflow.com/> ) is not too bad too.

</comment><comment><USER10> Had forgotten the link but here is the demo link <http://www.mockuptiger.com/wireframe/mockups/mt.php?x=DEMO>

You can also use it free by registering. check the download page for more details</comment>


Spreadsheet-like UI from MIT makes db queries easy - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6xmqcb8hFQ <comment><USER2> This is quite nice!</comment>


HSLuv, a developer friendly perceptual color space - <AUTHOR> https://www.kuon.ch/post/2020-03-08-hsluv/ <comment><USER3> Interesting! I hadn't heard of HSLuv. The original writeup / blog post [1] seems more informative though on "why" (hsluv.org is not a very interesting landing page).

I'm a little sad (disclosure: co-author) that we didn't make oRGB [2] more popular. Perhaps we should put some source code online?

[1] [https://www.boronine.com/2012/03/26/Color-Spaces-for- Human-B...](https://www.boronine.com/2012/03/26/Color-Spaces-for-Human- Beings/)

[2] [https://www.cs.utah.edu/~bratkova/research/projects/orgb/org...](https://www.cs.utah.edu/~bratkova/research/projects/orgb/orgb.pdf)

<comment><USER4> I was curious to see how oRGB worked in practice so I made some code to test this, and uploaded to a JS fiddle: [https://jsfiddle.net/phv7x39q/1/](https://jsfiddle.net/phv7x39q/1/)

It is a very naive implementation, more work could be put in optimizing it.

Once I got around to fiddling with it I understood what the paper explained. I'm not new to colorspaces or matrix transformations but it is hard sometimes to grasp the concept from the paper.

<comment><USER5> I think you have a bug - the rotation is supposed to be in the opposite direction if the red-green value is below zero. The paper doesn't make that very clear.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > HSLuv is already available for many languages

btw, the JS port is not perf-optimized (it's a straight compilation from haxe to js).

i hand-ported the C version [1] locally that avoids heap-allocating any objects or arrays, which makes it about 40% faster. i'm hoping it gets to replace the "official" js port at some point, but i still need to run it through all the tests [2]. if anyone is interested in helping out with this (i'm tight on time right now), i'll publish it.

initial benchmark of 100k random RGB triplets completes in 100ms in Chrome 80 and 60ms in Firefox 73, on a pretty average Core i5-7500T @ 2.70GHz. 1M triplets is 680ms in chrome and 421ms in firefox. the official JS port gets 934ms in Chrome and 545ms in Firefox for 1M triplets.

For reference, a typical jpeg image contains < 300k unique colors.

[1] [https://github.com/hsluv/hsluv-c](https://github.com/hsluv/hsluv-c)

[2] [https://github.com/hsluv/hsluv-c/blob/master/tests/scripts/s...](https://github.com/hsluv/hsluv-c/blob/master/tests/scripts/snapshot- rev4.json)

<comment><USER7> Not sure how much help I would be, but if it's any encouragement I would very much appreciate a "real" JS version. I looked at the JS version of HSLUV just the other week and was bummed that it was compiled from Haxe.

<comment><USER8> > was bummed that it was compiled from Haxe

Why do you need a "real" JS version? Is it that you want to be able to read/edit from a human-source, rather than a Haxe-compiled source (which I assume is less legible)?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I use HSLuv for designing our maps at Thunderforest. The map stylesheet language we use is CartoCSS, and it has built-in support for HSLuv since 2016.

[https://cartocss.readthedocs.io/en/latest/language_elements....](https://cartocss.readthedocs.io/en/latest/language_elements.html#color)

I can really recommend using HSLuv for this kind of thing. I used to use regular RGB values (like #f2cdaa), but it's hard to make features on the map "a bit less blue" without accidentally changing other properties. For example, changing #f2cdaa to #f2cd88 makes it less blue, but also darker.

So a few years ago I switched to using HSL in our stylesheets (and using the HSL tab in the Inkscape colour picker) which makes it easier to reason about the colour changes. But there's still some problems with HSL, as the article describes. For example when choosing road colours, I often want to keep the saturation and lightness the same, but when I make minor roads yellow the change in hue really changes the perceived brightness in HSL.

So HSLuv is great for what I do, since I know that if I get the brightness and saturation of the roads the way I want, I can mess around with the hue without any side effects. Or if I like the colour of the forests but want them slightly less saturated, again no side effects when I make changes.

The big drawback is that there aren't many colour pickers available in HSLuv, mainly just the one on [https://www.hsluv.org/](https://www.hsluv.org/) . I haven't found e.g. HSLuv colour picker plugins for Inkscape or the GIMP yet.

<comment><USER10> The "outdoors" demo image on [https://www.thunderforest.com/](https://www.thunderforest.com/) is literally 2 minutes away from where I grew up!

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Tangential - this reminds me of a tricky bug I once fixed.

I had this code that lets you choose a brighter or darker variant of a color palette, and initially bright yellow looked awfully close to white, so I decided to do this conversion through CIELAB (similar to HSLuv). Some unrelated code was storing these colors in the cloud using hex format, and clients would sync these colors back and forth with the cloud.

Usually, everything worked great. I had no problems, however a couple of users started emailing to complain that their colors had 'disappeared'! As in - <USER2> stored colors had become transparent. I spent at least a few hours auditing syncing code, but found nothing.

A few weeks later I stumbled on the issue by chance: if you select dark green (this specific color configuration only), the color would eventually become transparent.

The thing is - some platforms (e.g. iOS) support wide color, which use RGB values outside the 0 to 1 range. Green would go through the CIELAB brightness conversion, and come out with a negative number for one of the RGB values. This is OK, until you convert it to hex and send it to the cloud for syncing... naive color -> hex conversion will freak out with negative numbers. This got sent to the cloud, and later on, the cloud would send this back to the client, which would use it as a source of truth (and so dark green colors would disappear).

The fix was to write a less naive hex converter. This was a few years back, perhaps by now most color -> hex libraries consider this case.

<comment><USER12> This sounds more like a fundamental misunderstanding of color spaces (and gamuts) than anything.

<comment><USER11> Do you mind explaining that? If you increase the brightness of a color space like RGB or HSL, the perceived brightness color increase is different depending on hue.

This is why CIELAB was used, because like the linked HSLuv color space, you can increase brightness across hues with the same perceived brightness shift.

The fact that CIELAB can covert to RGB values outside the usual range is fine, e.g. negative values are fine in wide RGB color space.

<comment> mark-r Wide RGB color support is almost non-existent.

<comment><USER11> Every iPhone since the iPhone 7 supports wide color RGB by default...

<comment> mark-r It depends on how you define "wide color". Yes they use a color space with a wider gamut, but if you're trying to display a regular JPEG image it won't look any different.

<comment><USER11> Yep, most JPEG images might not look different, however the OS allows RGB values outside the regular range for any color specific API. When working directly with colors, the wide color support is still relevant (and for me, led to the bug I described - devices prior to iPhone 7 didn't exhibit the bug, because the OS clamped RGB values to the standard range.).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Somewhat related:

A friend of mine designed a color palette for terminals based on the Solarized set, but with some improvements:

[https://github.com/jan-warchol/selenized](https://github.com/jan- warchol/selenized)

</comment><comment><USER14> I am a big fan of HSLuv and I use it for generating colourschemes for lidar point clouds: [https://daniel.lawrence.lu/public/colortransform/#0_2584_964...](https://daniel.lawrence.lu/public/colortransform/#0_2584_964_49_6_2624_722_363_10_3248_906_559_15_415_961_731)

which is used for videos such as this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNt8D1mfwwo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNt8D1mfwwo)

<comment><USER15> That's really cool! I've always wanted to map my yard and house like that, but I imagine it would be quite expensive. I'm on a hill and it would make it so easy to play around with landscaping ideas without having to measure a ton.

Also, it's crazy how easy it is to recognize homes from SF!

<comment><USER16> Photogrammetry should be accurate enough for that purpose. Just make sure to include some reference object for scale.

A drone would probably be the best way to shoot the photos for this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I really like this. I've been working on a retro game for my students that only allows for 256 colors. I was planning on using the 216 web safe colors, but I think using a perfectly spaced out set of 256 colors using HSLuv would be more logical.

Any other ideas?

<comment><USER18> Web safe colors are completely useless for graphics. Really poor choice of colors.

256 is far too many to pick from :) People do their best work when they are under severe constraints. I would recommend a palette that was put together manually without algorithms because someone made sure that colors actually fit well together. My go to source for such project is this site: [https://lospec.com/palette-list/](https://lospec.com/palette-list/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I'm really not a specialist in color theory but have been looking for a library that could consistently return colors for multi charts with no defined number of lines. Most color palettes are a set size (5, 6, 8 colors) but I currently need to chart things with an unknown number of lines. Any suggestion from the mind hive?

<comment><USER20> Rotate hues with an increment of phi (1.618...). It maximizes average distance between colors.

It is discussed at the end of the sinebow article:

[https://basecase.org/env/on-rainbows](https://basecase.org/env/on-rainbows)

<comment> mark-r I love the Sinebow! It's a natural solution to a problem nobody ever talks about - the colors made by combining two primaries are unnaturally bright compared to a single primary. The way our monitors work, those colors emit twice as many photons. That's OK for yellow because we expect it to be bright, but magenta and cyan just look too garish.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Colors are hard. Mixing colors is harder. Yesterday I launched a new tool [1] to automatically create pleasing gradients aimed at web devs.

It uses ideas similar to the ones described in the article. But the hard part with dark-to-light color gradients is determining what's a pleasing darker or lighter variant of a color. There's a lot of subjectivity involved. You cannot objectively determine a certain color that lies "between" two other colors.

Anyway, I hope my tool helps with quickly creating a nice CSS color gradient.

[1] [https://mybrandnewlogo.com/color-gradient- generator](https://mybrandnewlogo.com/color-gradient-generator)

</comment><comment><USER7> Maybe someone in this thread would have an answer to this question: how do you interpolate between two colors in HSLUV? Just interpolating each parameter doesn't give the right result, since eg mixing two saturated complementary colors would create an equally saturated color, rather than some shade of gray.

Converting to CIELUV and mixing there doesn't seem safe since I don't think it's a "convex" color space; you run the risk of ending up with colors that can't be reproduced properly on a screen.

<comment><USER22> You almost always want to convert to CIELAB when doing things like averaging or interpolating colors. It is true that the sRGB gamut in CIELAB is not convex - this is less of an issue if you can use bigger color spaces like scRGB but that is often not the case. My advice in this case is to do as much as you can in LAB and then clamp your output to the range of values supported by your color space - i.e. if you get RGB(100, 300, -10) convert that to RGB(100, 255, 0). There are more sophisticated things you can do if you have to but this situation doesn't come up super often so it's not really worth the trouble in most cases.

<comment><USER23> Why not convert to linear sRGB (with higher bits per sample) instead? Something like what PNG supports for 16-bits. Does that give incorrect results too compared to going through CIELAB?

<comment><USER22> For interpolation, averaging, etc. anything based on RGB is not going to give good results. For example, if you average pure red and pure blue, you should get something like pure purple. But if you do that in RGB you'll get #7f007f, a much darker color than either pure red or pure blue. If you do it with LAB, you'll get #ca0088, which is perceptually about as bright as either of the colors you started with.

<comment><USER24> It helps to use linear gamma when manipulating RGB values. Linear gamma fixes most issues with interpolating and mixing RGB values and that's also why most modern CG pipelines use it. It produces the most natural results.

<comment> mark-r Yes linear gamma generates the most natural results, because that's the way physical light combines. Gamma was a great invention for display and transmission but it sure wrecked our ability to mix colors.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Isn't CIELUV more-or-less deprecated now, in favour of CIELAB?

Is there a reason that HSLuv is based on the former (and isn't "HSLab" instead)?

<comment><USER26> AB coordinates are a bit unintuitive, it's easier to visualize hues around a circle and have separate values for luminance and chroma, that's why people who work with color usually prefer LCH/HCL (Luminance, Chroma, Hue).

Chroma values in LCH differ between Hues, because each Hue has a different potential and max value. That's where HSLuv comes in, where chroma is a percentage value and therefore relative to the Hue, instead of an absolute one. This gives HCL similar usage ergonmics like HSL, thus the name HSLuv.

<comment><USER25> But it's possible to construct an LCh color space from either CIELAB or CIELUV. Why choose the one that's less widely-used?

<comment><USER26> Sure, but chroma is absolute in LCh, which makes it hard to use for color generation. 100% chroma in HSLuv is the highest value of a particular hue in LCh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Well written and very interesting article, but I think it would benefit from being more visually pleasing, especially the palette examples! Seeing that it deals with aesthetics....

</comment><comment><USER28> Maybe tangential, but what a great looking website!

</comment><comment><USER29> Green certainly looks darker than pink and blue at some point.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, it's not perfect, and I suspect we don't see colors the same way (monitor not calibrated the same way, and even our vision might be different), but it is "good enough" to avoid common pitfalls like having white text on yellow.</comment></comment>


Show HN: A Directory of Tech Companies, Events, News, Tweets etc in Scotland - <AUTHOR> https://find.techin.scot/companies/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hello!

I'm the creator of this.

For more than 4 years now I've been running websites round the tech community in Scotland, and several people have talked to us about listing companies.

So this is the first version of that! Anyone can add or edit a company (all moderated).

We are already talking to people about uses for the data and are working on code to introduce tagging by technologies used. This will let people pull sub- sets of the data for use elsewhere.

We have a track record in Scotland for running [https://opentechcalendar.co.uk/](https://opentechcalendar.co.uk/) to list events, and we bring to this problem the same focus on making sure the data is correct and is kept up to date. That is why we ask for email addresses from submitters (optional and private) - so we can follow up later.

( [https://find.techin.scot/](https://find.techin.scot/) also has Events, News, Twitter Lists and online communities.)

Happy to hear comments or feedback, publicly here or privately at email@example.com

Thanks, James

ps. The tech is that [https://find.techin.scot/](https://find.techin.scot/) is a static website served from AWS S3/CloudFront. The software that runs the directories of companies and online communities is a PHP/Symfony app and this stores the data, takes submissions and allows admins to moderate them.

<comment><USER2> Awesome. Small CSS suggestion:

in html:

        font-family: Calibri, Helvetica, sans-serif;

You currently use Arial which looks a little poor.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your suggestion! Just been playing with some different sans-serif and serif fonts to have a look ... not sure I like all Serif - may end up with a mix - Arial in the header and titles and a serif font in the body? Will test with some people :-)

<comment><USER2> Research: serif font (Cambria, Times, TNR, etc) in the body, 8-12 words per line is generally considered most readable. Check out how Medium does it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Hello from Edinburgh - nice work! Quite excited about the list of events: there's a bunch of very interesting stuff on there.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thank you :-) Events is where we started. I come from a background as an local event organiser, and from that I ended up starting [https://opentechcalendar.co.uk/](https://opentechcalendar.co.uk/) 4 and a half years ago. I'll maybe see you around town then!

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm curious as to why Skyscanner, Fanduel etc. don't appear here.

<comment><AUTHOR> No-one has added them :-) [https://find.techin.scot/companies/add/](https://find.techin.scot/companies/add/)

(Actually Skyscanner just has, and they will appear shortly when the caches clear.)

<comment><USER5> Glad to hear Skyscanner are on the list, they've been one of the best things to happen to the Scottish tech scene, both in terms of raising its profile and sponsoring (and hosting) many of the meetups in both Glasgow and Edinburgh.

I'm a founder of a spin-out called Scoop Analytics [1] from the School of Computing Science at University of Glasgow. Skyscanner has been incredibly generous and have recently given us and a number of other student-led startups from the School access to space in their Glasgow office to work from. If that doesn't demonstrate their commitment to improving the Scottish tech scene, then I don't know what does.

(We're at the bank of desks next to the Chill Zone if anyone from Skyscanner wants to come and say Hello!).

[1] [http://scoopanalytics.com](http://scoopanalytics.com)

<comment><USER6> I'll pop over next time I'm in that office :) Really interesting product, best of luck with it!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is handy, but I wish it had been posted a day earlier -- gutted that I missed the Edinburgh Women in Data Science tea.

</comment><comment><USER8> Hey - big fan and I love scottish tech :)

Hello from Edinburgh!

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! :-) We're also based in Edinburgh, great place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Toshiba Medial Visualisation Systems"

It should probably say "Medical" :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Fixed! Thanks. (Anyone can suggest changes tho!)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is great! Moving back from England to Scotland after uni 10 years ago was literally the worst choice of my life for a programming career. Plenty of Senior jobs for a Graduate wage.

</comment><comment><USER11> I like stuff like this :)

Did you consider automating it at all though? I've been considering using Companies House data, and a web-scraper, to find tech companies in my local area.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks :-)

Oh, companies house is a good one. I would have a look, but I would be wary as I can see traps; for instance the legal office address registered at Companies House might not be the actual office address you should go to for an event or an interview.

But generally I do like automation, as long as we can get high quality results.

<comment><USER11> I'll let you know if I ever get around to it!

I was presuming the legal office address was going to be their accountant's address too. However, if you get a name from Companies House, you might be able to find a website, and then a contact page... It might turn into a hard NLP problem though :)

<comment><USER12> The companies house data should be useful in that the company name is different for companies registered in scotland (Starts with SC) compared to those started in england and wales which just have a number.

I'd say there's probably a big correlation between that and companies operating primarily in Scotland as there's no major difference in terms of tax etc (for now) on where companies are registered, so no incentive to put in an artificial registration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Just curious why there are no tech. (it, bio) companies listed in St Andrews. It's a university town so one would expect to see a tech presence there.

<comment><USER14> I don't think people stick around long after graduating - it's a pretty tiny town and Edinburgh's close enough and not that much more expensive that it'd be easy to move and get set up there instead (not to mention Dundee being even closer).

Remember that startup funding is pretty lean in the UK in general compared to the US, and this far north of London in a quiet town I'd imagine it's near enough nonexistent no matter how prestigious the university is

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Great idea, we will stick Farmflo up there, we are looking for new devs just now!

<comment><AUTHOR> I haven't seen that appear yet - if you have any problems or comments about the process let us know!

<comment><USER15> Apologies - I got distracted....

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Lots going on in Edinburgh, not so much in Glasgow.

Anyone know why that is?

<comment><USER17> If it's a self-add thing, possibly just hasn't had the word of mouth yet over here?

<comment><USER16> More of an IRL comment - I get recruiters looking for people in Edinburgh at least once a week. Not a peep about tech in Glasgow though.</comment></comment></comment>


Unicorn shuts down with no money for refunds - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/7/21000094/unicorn-electric-scooter-shut-down-refund-tile <comment><USER2> "shutting down operations after blowing all its cash on Facebook and Google ads but only receiving 350 orders for its glossy white e-scooters"</comment>


Interstellar Comet 'Oumuamua Might Not Actually Be a Comet - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantamagazine.org/interstellar-comet-oumuamua-might-not-actually-be-a-comet-20181010/ <comment><USER2> Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18199801](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18199801)

</comment><comment><USER3> Anyone else think this smells like explorers passing through, noticing some odd savages on a blue planet, and then trying to discretely edge away faster?

<comment><USER4> Why doesn't anyone talk to us? "Because you're xenophobic hatemongers who only understand competition and packwolf mentality. You are effectively 2D flat 0's to our complexity who exist on an ashtray world at the bottom of a blackhole. You are inside gargantua 1. You just can't tell because you're inside."</comment></comment>


Show HN: Spectrum for AWS Cloudwatch - <AUTHOR> https://spectrumapp.io <comment><AUTHOR> Link: [https://spectrumapp.io](https://spectrumapp.io)

</comment><comment><USER2> This app seems so promising and usefull

</comment><comment><USER3> pricing and constraints up front would be useful. I can't seem to find a link anywhere.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's a valid point. Spectrum is free for now, but eventually there would be some paid plans as well.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Indeed a good product!

</comment><comment><USER5> Easy to use</comment>


Setting up your Git repositories for open source projects at GitHub  - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mhartl.com/2008/10/14/setting-up-your-git-repositories-for-open-source-projects-at-github/ <comment><USER2> I'm interested in getting better at Git. What other tutorials are really good for getting to an intermediate level with Git?

<comment><USER3> Git for Computer Scientists: <http://eagain.net/articles/git-for-computer- scientists/>

Peepcode screencast: <http://peepcode.com/products/git>

GitHub guides: <http://github.com/guides/home></comment></comment>


Microsoft deploys first ocean floor data center - <AUTHOR> https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/pavq99/microsoft-project-natick-submarine-data-center <comment><USER2> Thanks for this news. The video is interesting. I am wondering: if only one cable can transport all this data, why we cannot have more speed with personal Internet box? This is only an economic reason?</comment>


CalendarX – Get a calendar your audience can follow - <AUTHOR> https://www.calendarx.com <comment><USER2> Interesting. Sharing calendars is such a useful, but underused feature. Given that everyone has a smartphone these days, you'd think cinemas/ concert halls/ universities... would all share calendars of their events. Or at least people would share theirs with their friends. So this site seems like a good step in addressing this.</comment>


The trick Max Levchin used to hire the best engineers at PayPal - <AUTHOR> http://firstround.com/article/the-trick-max-levchin-used-to-hire-the-best-engineers-at-PayPal <comment><USER2> How long is Max Levchin going to milk the Paypal story. For crying out loud, it was 12 years ago - an eternity in the industry. How come all these great ideas didn't work for the next 12 years he has been trying to build other companies.

<comment><USER3> He's trying: <https://affirm.com/jobs>

<comment><USER2> Interesting, thanks. I thought Max Levchin was trying to get you pregnant. Just announced yesterday at D11.

[http://allthingsd.com/20130529/max-levchins-new-plan-to- get-...](http://allthingsd.com/20130529/max-levchins-new-plan-to-get-you- pregnant-and-improve-health-care-in-the-process/)

<comment><USER4> Pregnancy or e-payment. Clearly it's a 50/50 hedge bet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> So all the best engineers on the market just happened to have gone to school with Levchin, and all the best business types on the market just happened to have gone to school with Peter Thiel.

What an amazing coincidence!

<comment><USER6> Well they did go to Stanford and UIUC. Arguably the best school for business and the birthplace of the browser, and one of the best comp sci schools in the country.

I think the point is that he hired people he knew.

<comment><USER7> this is what they call meritocracy.

<comment><USER8> If you could show that either university is not meritocratic in their application process, you would have a point.

<comment><USER7> [http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Meritocracy-Classics- Organization...](http://www.amazon.com/Rise-Meritocracy-Classics-Organization- Management/dp/1560007044)

<comment><USER8> Thank you - I had a look at the book description and I don't see how it makes your point (regardless of whether the author is an authority on the subject)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > diversity of thought slows you down

What a fascinating idea. I suppose if you don't know whether you're going the right direction you might as well try to get there as fast a possible.

I worked for a while with a bunch of former video game developers at a non- game company. They got an amazing amount of work done, but they also just did what they wanted without discussing it. They just assumed that everybody would naturally agree with them so they didn't see any problem with sending a note to the rest of the team that said, "We've changed the signature of most of the UI method calls. The build now has 5,000 errors. Please make changes to your code."

<comment><USER10> Given the PayPal story, which started with the company being encryption software to beam money between Palm Pilots, that couldn't possibly be what Max meant. They definitely didn't "know whether [they were] going in the right direction."

What he means, I think, is that at an early stage startup the cost of coordination is very high. When you have 5 people working together you almost want a hive mind. If part of everyone's mutual understanding includes how, when, and why to change course then the cost of potentially sticking with the wrong thing for too long is far outweighed by the cost of coordination.

Your example is the opposite of what I take him to mean, viz., in a small team where everyone understands _how_ to operate independently and has a deep, mutual understanding then nobody's going to introduce a breaking change that leaves the other 4 people flat footed at a critical time.

<comment><USER11> He's putting his own cognitive narrative on a singular event. A few things change (they dont connect with elon, they dont give up on the palm pilot as a focus, etc) and the story ends radically different, to negative effect. Truth is, sometimes, if you bust your ass in the right place at the right time, shit goes marvelously to your favor. Or not. Either way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> "Hire everyone you know at Stanford." NEAT TRICK. Also "ignore diversity of thought," and apparently diversity of almost everything else. Absolutely stupid.

<comment><USER13> Is there any value in diversity for its own sake?

If I'm trying to build a rocket to go to Mars, give me the best people, not the people that would look best in a university recruiting photograph.

<comment><USER14> There is. But racial diversity has nothing to do with it.

The more diverse the backgrounds and thought patterns are of people on a team, the more likely they'll think of and consider solutions and paths that might not have been considered otherwise -- or see pitfalls in them.

If you're building a rocket to go to Mars, you absolutely want as much diversity in your engineering backgrounds as possible (assuming everyone already meets the engineering requirements in the first place).

<comment><USER13> Have you ever worked with someone that really gets the way you think? It's refreshing. The communication overhead is very low.

It seems I spend a great deal of my time trying to communicate things I already know with people of "diverse" thinking styles.

Don't worry about people being robotic clones of each other. It almost never happens. There is diversity enough without seeking out more blatant diversity.

<comment><USER15> I've learned an awful lot from people who think very differently than me. They make me reconsider my assumptions and quite often lead to a better solution.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "strongest technical teams in silicon valley history"?

So much for the guys who invented the silicon transistor, the microprocessor. the Macintosh team must have been small fries.

</comment><comment><USER17> TLDR: Cronyism works well if all your college bros are top talent.

<comment><USER18> OR: survivorship bias lets you make all sorts of unfounded claims.

<comment><USER19> Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> This is one of those 'success has many parents'. Most of these stories are semi-made up after success.

<comment><USER21> Success is like failure: it only exists backwards in time.

Generally we take a hammer and beat the messy chaos of reality until it resembles the monomyth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> 190+ IQ's. Now I understand why slide was such a triumph in the myspace Picfeed Battle of 2006.

</comment><comment><USER22> Seems like a number of comments are missing the good here. A quick summary of my takeaways:

\- Ability to leverage talent to speedy outcomes _is_ the competitive advantage of startups. Lean heavily on this.

\- Startups habitually underestimate their ability to attract top talent. Don't submit to this line of thinking, or at minimum work to prove your hypothesis of impossibility.

\- One should be ruthless in early shaping of company culture. Certain things are absolutely necessary to get right -- this is one.

\- The things that scare away second tier talent can actually attract top tier people. Like focusing product development on your ideal user, one should focus hiring energies on ideal hires.

<comment><USER23> All of which is summed up by the comments about people from one particular university.

Point by point: Easy to leverage people you went to uni with Easy to attract top talent, if you went to uni with it Ruthless? If you mean selecting from a single know talent pool, sure. You'll probably scare away 2nd tier talent, if you a already populated with your mates from a top uni.

OK, those are bitter and twisted replies, but being British, I know all about closed shop universities and mates giving mates jobs. Old School Tie we call it. Have a look at our government....

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> "One crazy trick. HR managers hate him!"

Let's stop looking for crazy tricks. Generally, there aren't any.

Some stuff is simple, some stuff is complicated.

</comment><comment><USER24> There are no tricks in this story, just a philosophy that he believed in, and strictly adhered to.

</comment><comment><USER25> What is paypay? Am I the only one that noticed that?

<comment><USER26> No, I'm a proofreader. I wondered the same thing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> this thing worked _once_ for him. that's not a valid sample. all these great stories out of startups that were plain lucky to be in the right place in the right time. it wasn't technology that made paypal big - who gives a shit how they hired coders?</comment>